Rope guide roller



July 24, 1962 R. B. BOLTON ROPE GUIDE ROLLER Filed March 16, 1960 3,945,975 Patented July 24, 1962 "ice 3,045,975 ROPE SUEDE ROLLER Robert Beniamin Bolton, 14 Middle Drive, Ponteiand, Newcastle-upon-Tync, England Filed Mar. 16, 196i), Ser. No. 15,357 Claims priority, application Great Britain Sept. llll, T 59 4 Claims. (ill. 254-l94i) This invention relates to guide rollers for haulage ropes and the like such as are used for pulling mine cars or other vehicles along a rail trackway.

At the present time the guide rollers for such ropes consist of a central portion on which the rope normally rests, with a flange at each end which is intended to keep the rope on the central portion of the roller. A difficulty sometimes arises owing to the haulage rope coming off a roller over the top of one of the flanges, this being particularly liable to happen at bends in the rail track, and it is then extremely diflicult to get the rope back again on the roller over the top of the flange, particularly if there is then some tension in the rope.

According to my invention I provide at each end of the roller central portion a boss which decreases towards its outer end and which bears spiral helical grooves extending in opposite directions and crossing in the peripheral surface of the boss, so that when a haulage rope bears on the boss, any longitudinal movement of the rope causes it to run up one of the helical grooves on to the central portion of the roller. The invention also extends to the provision of end bosses, as recited, separately for use in the construction of rope rollers.

Where the rope haulage way is substantially straight it is possible to employ a roller as aforesaid having no flanges at the ends of the cylindrical portion. If the rope, which has come ofl the central portion of the roller, rides on to the boss, it becomes engaged with one or other of the helical grooves according to the direction of movement and is thereby directed back on to the central portion of the roller. With this arrangement it will be appreciated that it is not necessary to lift the rope over a flange.

However, since most rope haulage ways include curves, and moreover the rope is often allowed to become slack (for example, when unhitching a load of tubs and hitching on another) it may be preferred to provide a roller accord ing to the invention with helically grooved bosses as aforesaid, said bosses having at their inner ends annular surfaces of which the diameter is slightly greater than that of the cylindrical centre portion so as to form flanges which will serve at least to retain a laterally surging rope on the centre portion. Since the grooved bosses will automatically restore a displaced rope on to said centre portion. it is unnecessary that such flanges should have more than a slight constraining effect, and they may therefore have their inner surfaces outwardly flared, and need not be deeper than about half the diameter of the rope, thereby permitting the rope to move laterally off the roller as must occur where the way is curved and where the rope is guided for a suitable distance (while no tubs are approaching and passing) by rollers rotatable on vertical axes at the side of the way.

In a roller having bosses which provide flanges as aforesaid, the base of each of the two helical grooves is brought up at the inner end of the boss to the radius of the flange, so that a rope lifted by either groove then falls inside the flange on to the central portion. Thus, at a location where the natural line of the rope is over the inner end of the boss, the small, conical flange can exert the necessary slight constraining influence to retain the rope on the centre portion and to prevent the rope from continually oscillating laterally from said centre portion into the grooves of the boss and being thereby shifted back on to the centre portion.

An embodiment of the invention will be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a plan view of a rope guide roller assembly,

FIG. 2 is a fragmentary vertical section on the centre line IL-II of FIG. 1,

FIG. 3 is an end elevation of one end boss on the line Iii-J11 of FIG. 1, and

FIG. 4 is a side elevation of the other end boss, as seen in the direction of the arrow IV, FIG. 1.

The central portion of the guide roller as shown in FIG. 1 comprises a cylindrical tube 10, for example, 8" long with an outside diameter of 4 /2. This tube is supported by end bosses 11, 12, for example of hard cast iron or cast steel, each having a diameter at its inner end of 5" to provide at each end of the central portion 16 a small annular flange 13 the inner face of which is slightly bevelled as shown. The two end bosses are identical, but are shown in FIG. 1 mutually displaced by in order to illustrate more clearly their mode of construction.

The end bosses 11, 12 with the tube 10 secured between them on internal shoulders 9, are mounted as shown in FIG. 2 with the aid of ball bearings 14 to rotate freely on a fixed central spindle 15. The inner race of the ball bearing is clamped between a shoulder 16 on the spindle and a sealing bush 17, which is brought into engagement with a vertical face 18 of a support 19 by a bolt 2d screwed into an axial threaded bore in the reduced end of the spindle, said end being located in a hole in the face wall member 21 of the support. Said wall is welded to a hollow box 22 of shaped sheet metal, which presents a smooth external surface sloping downwards from the end of the boss 12 in the direction of the length of the roller as shown in FIG. 2, and also sloping symmetrically transverse to the roller axis as shown in chain lines in FIG. 3. The support boxes 19 are provided at their lower margins with horizontal feet 23 to rest upon a sleeper 28, and secured thereto by coach screws 24.

The peripheral surface of each of the end bosses 11 and 12 presents two symmetrical, crossed helico-spiral grooves 25, 26, each of substantially a single turn, comprised within an envelope which is a frustrum of a cone having an included angle of 60.

The outer end face 27 of the boss is eccentric to provide a low starting Zone 29 jointly for the two grooves 25 and 26. As shown in FIG. 2, this starting point 29 is located slightly below the level of the top of the wall 21 of the support 19 so that a rope R which has ridden up the sloping lateral surface of the support 19 will fall into said starting point 29, and according to the direction of motion of the rope will then cornmence to rotate the roller and thereby be displaced up on to the central portion 10. When the roller has rotated through 90 as shown in FIG. 4, the rope R is moved laterally so that it is wholly inside the end face 27, whereafter it is further displaced endwise by a por tion of the groove which is defined by a projection the outer face 30' of which lies in the conical defining envelope of the boss.

As the roller rotates under the rope in the direction of the arrow A, FIG. 4, through a further 90, the rope comes to bear upon the crossing Zone 31 of the two grooves 25 and 26. As can be seen in the boss 12, FIG. 1, and in FIG. 4, ridges 32 which separate the upper end of one groove from the lower end of the other groove on either side of said crossing zone are discontinuous, and their ends emergent from the base of said crossing zone slightly displaced in a direction towards the narrow outer end of the boss, so that, referring to FIG. 4, the rope R riding up the smaller left hand portion of the groove 26 will be displaced with certainty into the higher right hand portion of the same groove,

and not enter the descending right hand portion of the groove 25.

The upper portions 33 of both grooves are extended helically into the flanges 13 and up to the level of the outer diameter of said flanges, so that the rope undergoing lateral displacement is shifted over the flange on to the surface of the central portion 10. Thereon it can be retained under normal lateral surging by the flanges :13, although there is no substantial resistance to its passing over either of said flanges should forces tending to displace it laterally become excessive. However, the flanges 13 are suflicient to prevent the rope from continually passing from the central portion on to one of the grooved end bosses and being thereby returned to said central portion.

It will be appreciated that with a roller comprising end bosses having crossed helico-spiral grooves substantially as described, when a haulage'rope which has previously been displaced to one side of the way is brought back towards the centre, for example, on a tractive tension being applied to the rope, or on the approach of a load of tubs, the rope will ride easily up the lateral slope of the end support 19', and move over the top thereof into contact with the end boss. Should the latter not be in the position relative to the support 19 shown in FIG. 2, the rope will frictionally engage the surface and turn the roller until it can fall into the low starting zone 29. Thereafter by friction the rope rotates the roller so as to ride up one of the grooves 25, 26 to the top of the flange 13 and over said flange on to the central portion 10. Thus, wear of the rope is substantially reduced.

The individual helical grooves are not necessarily of uniform pitch in either the spiral or the helical sense, nor are they necessarily of semicircular section or of uniform section throughout their length.

Rollers according to the invention for use in any length of a rope haulage which is relatively straight may have end bosses the larger, inner ends of which are not of such size as to provide flanges at the ends of the central portion, the taper being correspondingly reduced to provide an outer, smaller end having a suitable relationship with the top of the support 19 as described.

It will be known that the rollers of rope haulage ways to which the invention relates usually work in accumulations of dust and grit upon the track, and that a problem in their maintenance is the entry of such dust and grit into the bearings. It has been found that roller end bosses as described tend to mitigate this problem, in that the ridges 34 and 35 defining the outer sides of the grooves 25, 26, as seen at the lower end of FIG. 1, tend in the rotation of the roller to sweep dust and grit inwards from the faces 18 of the supports, so that accumulation thereof against said faces is prevented or reduced.

A roller as described is adapted to be conveniently dismantled, after detachment from a sleeper, so as to enable replacement of an individual component, i.e., the central tube portion 10', or one of the end bosses 11, 12, as may be required by wear thereof.

4 What I claim and desire to secure by Letters Patent 1. A guide roller for a haulage rope, comprising in combination a tube constituting a central portion, two bosses one at each end of said central portion, each of said bosses having on its inner face an annular shoulder supporting an end of said tube, a spindle Whereon said bosses are rotatable, a pair of supports for the ends of said spindle, securing bolts penetrating each of said supports and engaging each end of said spindle to secure the spindle in said supports, said securing means also serving to clamp said tube between said bosses, each of said bosses having an inner end of a diameter at least equal to that of the contiguous end of said tube and each decreasing towards its outer end, and two spiralhelical grooves extending in opposite directions each through not more than one turn, and crossing once in the peripheral surface of each of said bosses, and having their inner ends emerging at the periphery of said flange, each of said grooves having throughout its length a continuously arcuate base and a width not substantially greater than the diameter of the rope to be guided therein.

2. A guide roller according to claim 1, wherein each boss has, on either side of the crossing zone of said grooves, emergent ends of ridges which separate the upper inner part of each groove from the lower outer part of the other groove, said ridge ends curving away from the helical locus towards the smaller end of the boss.

3. A guide roller according to claim 1, wherein the continuously arcuate base of each of said grooves is concave obliquely and outwardly with respect to the roller axis.

4. A guide roller according to claim 1, wherein each of said pair of supports comprises a vertical face plate wherein said spindle is non-rotatably secured by one of said bolts, a dished steel plate having one edge positioned in a vertical plane welded to the edge of said face plate, and an edge positioned in a horizontal plane, and feet projecting horizontally from said last named edge, said dished steel plate forming a box enclosing the head of said bolt and presenting externally smooth surfaces in clined endwise and transversely with respect to the roller axis, to constitute a ramp up which the rope can slide on to the smaller conjoint ends of the grooves in the adjacent boss.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 519,586 Murphy May 8, 1894 1,065,771 Born June 24, 1913 1,409,807 Wood Mar. 14, 1922 1,749,146 Maison Mar. 4, 1930 FOREIGN PATENTS.

22,192 Great Britain Oct. 31, 1905 488 Great Britain Jan. 8, 1914 404,099 Great Britain Jan. 11, 1934 

